AIR#15. The ICA Declaration on LGBTQ+ Archives

After the Presidency statement on LGBTQ+ archives in June 28th, 2024, and the webinar to present the Sex-Afective and Gender Diversity Working Group just one day before, the International Council on Archives (ICA) has taken a third step in the path of recognizing and valuing the archives of the sex-affective and gender diversity (SAGD) and the archival professionals who identified as SAGD people. Last October, 30th, the institution presented the Declaration on LGBTQ+ Archives and Archivists at the 20th ICA Congress in Barcelona. The presentation concludes a consultation and text drafting process that has been ongoing for the past few months. The initial idea was conceived by Carlos Serrano Vásquez, ICA Secretary, as a way to put on value the work made by LGBTQ+ archives in the last decades, to normalize and visiblize the existence of LGBTQ+ community archives, as well as a call to institutional archives to look the collections they kept and the profession through a queer lens.

This Declaration follows the path marked in 2011 in Paris by the Universal Declaration on Archives (UDA) and in 2019 in Tandanya / Adelaide by the Declaration on Indigenous Archives. So, this text falls within the general framework of statements from the ICA. The Barcelona Declaration is more similar to UDA in its formal aspects, but the Tandanya Declaration also has been an inspiration to this initiative. Although the Tandanya Declaration is notably longer and has a greater number of points, the Barcelona Declaration is intended to be the foundational stone on which to build further work of in-depth analysis and development. The SAGD and the Indigenous peoples share a long tradition of oppression and erasure. The sex-affective and gender diversity is also a part of the indigenous traditions and backgrounds, and not an imposition by colonial authorities. Sexual diversity has been historically the norm, not the exception, among indigenous peoples all over the world. So, the Barcelona Declaration pays tribute to the efforts and work by the ICA Expert Group on Advocacy (ICA-AEG) and the Expert Group on Indigenous Matters (ICA-EGIM) and which materialized into two valuable texts of reference.

This Declaration wish to be a first tool to confront the process of marginalization that have erased the vast majority of archives, collections and documents about SAGD people and organizations. This process follows a plan to deny any historical reference to this group of people that wasn't associated to their criminalization. SAGD people represent between the 10 and 20 per cent of human population, but the amount could be higher: estimating the demographics of SAGD people on a global scale is a difficult task, because in the most parts of the world discrimation has led people to conceal their sex and gender identities.

(Photo by Gina Pellicer)

The DSGS has been able to participate in the drafting process jointly with members of ICA-SAGDAA-WG. They both are the only two archival professional entities that work on this topic in the world. Now the Declaration is embarking on a journey to spread and allow for more in-depth exploration. ICA-SAGDAA-WG and SAA-DSGS are planning some activities for this purpose, as a webinar to be held in the coming months as a dissemination event where the text and its underlying principles can be discussed.

You can know more about the Declaration at the ICA website.